It's interesting that you should mention bus 6470 because there is something unique about it. It is the last of the buses with the flip dot display screens which seem to be in perfect condition, including the front, side, and back display screens. If nothing else, the display screens could be used for the Nova bus in the heritage fleet.

Supervisors are also to blame. Even with pre-paid boarding, a supervisor is almost always present at the Blue Line at Kimball during the evening rush period. He likes to keep the second bus at the terminal for a few minutes even if both buses are behind schedule if he notices a gap in service, even if that gap is only ten minutes. It is pointless for the follower to pass the leader if he will still be held back at Kimball by the supervisor.

If the electric buses perform well and are more cost efficient than diesel buses, CTA would probably regret that Forest Glen is not an indoor garage. If it were, about sixty electric buses could go there in the distant future because the garage is less than one mile away from the Jefferson Park transit center. Then the 56 Milwaukee, 68 Northwest Highway, 81 Lawrence, 81W West Lawrence, 85 Central, 91 Austin, and 92 Foster could all be electric. It would be something which could be very appealing, at least from a financial standpoint.

The 9, X9, 53, and 54 are always 7900-series Nova. The 77 and 56 should be but never are because FG does not have enough equipment. There are always a few Flyer on 77 and on 56 and sometimes even an old Nova.

I'm positive that 8347 had a fare box problem. If someone tried to insert paper dollars, the driver said to keep it because the fare box wasn't working. There were about three passengers who were told this on just one trip between Central and Sheridan. Probably the only functioning fare boxes are those in the 6400's which are still in service and the 18 or so 6400's which were retired when the 8325's were released into revenue service.

In an earlier post on this thread, I mentioned that buses 8332 and 8347 did not have functioning fare boxes. If that is confirmed, we could have an explanation as to why most of these buses are at 103. SS probably does not have surplus functioning fare boxes and because the main payment system is Ventra, there was no need to buy replacement parts for the fare boxes since there are about 80 functioning fare boxes in the 6400 series buses. But since replacing the fare boxes is not really a priority at SS, they probably want to keep the buses at 103, at least for now, until they have the time to take out the fare boxes from the 6400 buses which were retired. This also could explain why it took longer than usual to place these buses into revenue service.

This might be something important, but both 8347 and 8332 had malfunctioning fare boxes which would not take paper dollars. Since 103 is closer to SS, the reason for the bus swapping could lie there. If CTA did not have fully functioning fare boxes for the 8325s, it would make sense to swap them for the fare boxes in the 6400s. This could be the case because there is no other explanation for 103 to put their sticker in the windshield of 8236 through 8247 if they knew that the buses would be there for only four days. And for the past few days CTA has been having issues with many buses because the run number boxes show run numbers 992 or 999 or the run number from when the bus was in service a few hours earlier.